Goosebumps film franchise in the works

R.L. Stine’s long-running Goosebumps series—those musty tomes which introduced mewling grade-schoolers to the unspeakable horrors of killer sponges and sentient lawn gnomes—will get a big-screen adaptation by Disturbia screenwriter Carl Ellsworth, who has been tapped to write the first in what Columbia hopes will be a potential family franchise. A sure bet, it would seem, considering that total book sales of the Goosebumps series are second only to those of Harry Potter, and then like a few bajillion dollars below that, you have the rest of the whole of Western literature. There’s no word yet on which of the scores of Goosebumps titles will be the first to make the jump. It’s been a while for us, so we forget: Do any of them have vampires who almost, but don’t really fuck each other?